Ask Dr. Kevin
Jun 1st, 2009 | By admin | Category: What's The Buzz
Dear Dr Kevin:
I have always felt alienated from traditional religions. As if somehow because I was born a woman, I either wasn’t as good as men, or was held to blame for everything. I finally felt forced to leave and distance myself from the traditional churches in order not to feel bad about myself. Is God really that negative about women?
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Gender cursed from Indianapolis
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Dear Gender cursed: No God (nor Goddess) hates women. Many of the more “traditional” church are reading from an old script when men were actually afraid of the power women had over them. In an interesting way, women by nature can be much more independent, versatile and self sufficient than men. It has always been my opinion that the fact that man needed women more and women really tended to only need man for the donation of seed to create children, is what created so much misogyny in early church text.
Keeping women in their place and forcing them to be dependent sprang forth from the fear of how powerful women can be. And certainly when the early Christian-based explores and church came up against religions and societies where women were fully in their power, and often were not only equal but leaders, it frankly drove them up the wall. The men in these societies were all considered heretics, and all the women witches and crones. These are all examples of how afraid the male patriarchy were (and sometimes still are) of feminine power.
But if the idea of belonging to a God-centered community still calls to you, more and more of what you think of as “traditional” religions have kindly moved past that embarrassing part of their heritage and welcome women freely and as equals. As many of you know, the Unitarian Universalist Association is a favorite of mine. However, I do recommend avoiding any church where you smell brimstone coming from underneath the door or hear phrases like “literal word of God”—because in my experience, they’ll punish you for being female every time.
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Dear Dr Kevin,
One of my biggest problems is getting other people to value my time.
I am self-employed, which means my schedule can often be very flexible. The problem is, as soon as people know this, they think it gives them license to “bump” commitments they have with me in favor of any new invitations, opportunities, or commitments that come their way. I wouldn’t mind so much if this only happened on occasion, but I am getting very tired of people thinking it’s OK to cancel or reschedule plans they made with me at the last minute because “something came up” or “someone dropped in.” Of course, this doesn’t happen all the time. But it happens often enough to be annoying.
Every time I’ve stood my ground on this, the friendship either went sour or ended. I am tired of people thinking that I am being inconsiderate because I value my time enough to expect them to keep their commitments. Unless I was having an absolute emergency, I have always kept the commitments I made with them.
Any suggestions?
Hi Samantha,
Being self-employed, as well as my elderly mother’s caretaker, I certainly know what you’re talking about.
I’ve had my share of people say they want to do something with me, then turn around at the last minute and say, “Oh I really wanted to go to the theater (or whatever) with you, but my cousin dropped in, so we’re going out for dinner, and with your schedule being so open, we can always get together later…..,”
After a few too many incidents, the next time that person called and wanted to make plans, I told her that my schedule was taken up for the night, and I’m not available. My feeling is that if you allow yourself to be the friend people can “always do something later” with, that’s exactly how you’ll be treated. Sometimes it works when you stand up for yourself, and sometimes people disappear, but to me, either alternative is better than allowing others to make a habit of not valuing your time enough to keep commitments.
That’s my take on it, but I’m very interested in reading any ideas Dr Kevin has on the subject!
Anita